


Excess Energy

by Bunny7033



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Tickle Fights, Tickling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 06:36:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14326722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bunny7033/pseuds/Bunny7033
Summary: "Sokka doesn’t like being the only non-bender on the team and so he likes to exploit the others’ harmless weaknesses. Even the dumb ones. Especially for Aang, who a) doesn’t mind, b) is like a little brother, and c) can be a bit annoying sometimes."





	Excess Energy

“Why do you need to fish anyway, wouldn’t it be easier to just do this?” Aang hopped up and lifted some water from the stream in front of them in a perfect, round, hovering ball with a fish suspended in the middle. He guided it onto land and then let it drop – directly onto Sokka’s head.

Sokka sighed.

“Oops! Wait, let me try again.” Aang summoned up another ball of water and airbended the fish into it, its tail smacking Sokka’s chest and face multiple times in the process.

Sokka didn’t hate not being a bender, exactly. He’d long gotten over the jealousy stemming from the attention Katara had always received as the last waterbender in the Southern Tribe. And it wasn’t like he was completely useless, either. He had a boomerang! Which was cool, thank you very much, Zuko. And thanks to Master Piandao, he also wasn’t too shabby with a sword. Sokka was never (well, hardly ever) one to brag, but he was a pretty handy guy to have around in a fight.

Still, with the rest of Team Avatar having bending powers - and not only that but being master benders, or at least almost-master-benders - he had to take his kicks where he could get them.

Since he was basically the big brother of the group (maybe not for Zuko, although the guy was growing on him) he was the first to discover a very important fact: Katara, Toph, and Aang were all ticklish. Ticklishness was always a weakness worth exploiting - it was practically written into Sokka’s ‘big brother’ job description. He’d been executing tickle attacks against Katara since they were kids, and he wasn’t planning on stopping that anytime soon.

Of course, said tickle attacks were harder to carry out when said sister could freeze him into an ice block, but Sokka had his ways.

Toph was hard too – as was obvious to anyone who’d known her for more than five minutes, being blind didn’t prevent her from taking care of herself. She could feel the ground to sense Sokka sneaking towards her, for crying out loud! It was a true test of his stealth. If he was sneaky enough and she was in a good mood, she would let him tickle her for a couple of minutes and maybe crack a smile before smashing him with a boulder.

Aang, though, was almost too easy. He was just as likely to start a tickle fight as Sokka. He wouldn’t manage to stay still for long – and the kid could be hard to pin down, having mastered airbending and on the way to mastering the other three – but he would only flit away for a few seconds, laughing, before joining right back in the fight. He could dish out as good as he got, but it was usually to make someone laugh. He had even gotten Zuko before, which Sokka was still surprised hadn’t ended in disaster. But that was Aang. Fun-loving, humorous, and kind to a fault.

Which was to say, Sokka was quite fond of Aang’s cheerful, chatty, over-energetic self, apart from times like now, when all Sokka wanted to do – all he wanted to do – was catch a fish.

Just one. Was that too much to ask for?

He patted his dripping hair and wiped water from his eyes as he grumbled, “Well, some of us can’t bend a fish out of the water. Some of us need to catch fish the old-fashioned way, and some of us actually enjoy doing that.”

Aang flopped down on the grass and gave a dramatic sigh. “But that takes forever.”

With another huff, Sokka focused on his fishing rod in the water. A moose trout moseyed up to his hook and prodded hesitantly at the bait – before a loud splash from a rock landing in the water caused it to turn tail and dart away.

“That’s it!” Sokka exclaimed, whirling on Aang who had the decency to look mildly guilty. “I’ve had it with your – your – excess energy scaring the fish away!”

Sokka pounced on Aang, straddling him to pin him down as he dug his fingers into Aang’s sides. “Hahaha, Sokka! What are you dohohoing?”

“You know exactly what I’m doing,” Sokka said, wriggling his fingers over Aang’s sides and stomach. “And you know that you totally deserve it, for ruining my fishing time!”

Aang squirmed as Sokka’s fingers moved up to poke at his ribs, but he wasn’t trying too hard to get away, even though Sokka was fairly sure that he could. “I dihihidn’t ruin ihihit! You can still fihihish!”

“Not if you’ve scared them all away.”

“But they’ll come bahahahack!” Aang protested. He squeaked and flinched away with a wide grin when Sokka’s fingers touched upon a spot underneath his ribs, and Sokka immediately took advantage, scribbling his fingers more rapidly across that area. “Y-You juhuhust neehehehehed to be pahahahatient!”

“I was being patient before you jumped in. I almost caught a moose trout!”

“Moose trout ahaharen’t even thahahat good!”

“Aang, you don’t even eat fish,” Sokka cried in exasperation. He wriggled his fingers across Aang’s neck, a spot he’d had luck with in the past, and Aang didn’t disappoint. He immediately scrunched up his shoulders and jerked his chin down, giggling nonstop. It was kinda cute.

The little jerk totally deserved it.

“You are a menace to peaceful fishermen everywhere,” Sokka declared, scribbling across Aang’s stomach and poking at his belly button. “If you mess this up for me again, I. Will. Get. You.” He punctuated each word with a poke to Aang’s belly button, each time eliciting noisy laughter.

Sokka got up, leaving Aang to wriggle a good distance away before flopping back down on his back, still giggling. After giving him an I’m-watching-you sign, Sokka picked his rod back up and sat down at the bank of the stream again with a grin. Maybe now he could finally catch some fish.

And if he didn’t, well. At least he’d have someone to blame for it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old work, but I nevertheless wanted to share it! You can find this same work, along with many more, on my tumblr here: http://calmturquoise.tumblr.com/post/154362671455/excess-energy


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